There are lots of different types of anxiety. Which one is stopping you from reaching your life goals?
Generalised Anxiety Disorder
For example, worrying about sitting exams is normal but when these thoughts take over and become part of your everyday thinking, it can be a sign of generalised anxiety disorder. This is when you worry about lots of things and feel you cannot control these thoughts. You struggle to make sense of the worries and deal with them in a rational thinking way. These thoughts overtake your whole day. Your ability to concentrate on work or just having a conversation with someone can become an issue because the worries keep popping into your head.
Social Anxiety
How can I speak to the person I have just sat next too? What will they think of me? Will they find me interesting? Why is that person watching me and why are they looking at me like that?
These are some of the thoughts that you can have when suffering from social anxiety. Enjoying social situations can be challenging. You spend the whole social event worrying what other people are thinking about me. When in fact, they are just enjoying themselves and not thinking about you or how you behave at all.
You fear being criticised by someone, so you will look at the floor and avoid looking at people. After the event, you will get home and worry if you said the right thing to people. You will worry if anyone was offended by anything that you said.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Having difficulty concentrating or sleeping and having flashbacks to a traumatic event/accident can be a sign of PTSD. Reliving the traumatic event/accident is normal but it becomes a problem after a few weeks if the images and thoughts about the event/accident are not disappearing.
Sometimes things can happen that you remind you of the event/accident, a similar location, or noise.
There other different types of anxiety, but I felt these were the most common.